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1273 lines
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
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* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
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* *
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* Issue 83 -- November 1999 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
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* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
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"Suzanna" on Home Video
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Mack Sennett
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
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TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
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Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
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death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
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scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
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(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
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murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
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silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
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toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
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for accuracy.
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Well-known author Charles Higham is currently writing a book on the Taylor
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case, and will be featured discussing the case on upcoming interviews on The
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History Channel and A&E Cable.
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The lyrics to Stevie Nicks' song, "Mabel Normand," are on the web at
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http://members.aol.com/KITENZ/lyrics.html#Mabel Normand
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A class at Georgia Tech on multimedia "Advanced Design and Production" has
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their Fall 1999 semester class project on the Taylor case. For details see
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http://pbl.cc.gatech.edu:8080/lcc6114.1
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"Suzanna" on Home Video
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In the weeks before and months after the Taylor murder, Mabel Normand was
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working on the silent film "Suzanna", a film which evidently does not survive
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in complete form. "The Unseen Silents" is a video recently released by
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Unknown Video (unkvid@earthlink.net), containing the four surviving reels of
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"Suzanna", plus surviving footage from "Riddle Gawne", starring William S.
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Hart with Lon Chaney, and a rare Harold Lloyd short. One of the supporting
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actors in "Suzanna" is Carl Stockdale, who was Charlotte Shelby's alibi
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witness in the Taylor case, and who was himself suspected of being Taylor's
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killer (see TAYLOROLOGY 22). Production on the film was suspended for several
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weeks after Taylor's murder, until Mabel Normand had recovered from the shock
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of Taylor's death and filming could resume. So as a record of two people
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involved in the case, filmed before and after the murder, "Suzanna" is the
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closest thing to newsreel footage available. The film's cameraman, Homer
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Scott, was also the cameraman for William Desmond Taylor from 1914 to 1917,
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having filmed about 20 movies directed by Taylor. And Walter McGrail, the
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leading man in "Suzanna," was also the leading man in "The Top of New York,"
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Taylor's last-released film. "Suzanna" is not a slapstick film; the humor in
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the film is centered effectively on Mabel Normand's appealing personality.
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Mack Sennett
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Because of his romantic and professional relationship with Mabel
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Normand, film producer Mack Sennett was drawn into the aftermath of the
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Taylor murder. The following are a few interviews with Sennett made
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throughout the silent film era.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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August 15, 1914
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MOVING PICTURE WORLD
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Mack Sennett Talks of His Work
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For the first time in a couple of years Mack Sennett last week had a
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good look at the skyline of New York City from the heights of Fort Lee. The
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last time the Keystone producer had stood on the hill was in the days when he
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was making the initial pictures of the brand that has made its trail around
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and over the world and laughed itself into the hearts of practically all
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picturegoers. Mr. Sennett had gone to Fort Lee as a member of the party of a
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score of film men who were looking over the fine plant of the Willat Studios.
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It just happened that in piling into autos in Times Square it fell to the
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writer to be the partner of the soft-spoken comedian. Mr. Sennett said he
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expected to be in New York about ten days. Together with Thomas H. Ince he
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had made the trip to the Atlantic Coast for the purpose of taking up business
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matters with the officers of the New York Motion Picture Company.
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The chief bit of information divulged by Mr. Sennett, news of immediate
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importance to picture followers, is that he brought east with him a six-reel
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comedy--one on which he had, with all the members of the Keystone Company,
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put in fourteen weeks. The comedian said the production contained all that
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he had in himself. "I have put into it all that I have got," he said with
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emphasis. "I want to show it before I return to the Coast, and I guess it
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will be arranged. We have spared no necessary expense. As an illustration
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of this, we wanted a real snow scene. A company was sent up into the
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mountains, twelve or fourteen thousand feet above sea level. The party
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camped out in the snow and was gone a week. Some fine stuff was obtained,
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but we used just one hundred feet. That was what we wanted."
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A week's trip for a hundred feet of film--a hundred seconds on the
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screen--seems like a record for a dramatic production. Mr. Sennett would not
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say that the six reels were all comedy--"there's a little of everything," he
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said. Asked as to who had written the scenario, he intimated there was none.
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"I framed the story as I went along," he said. "I find this method has
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merits. It gives an elasticity to the plot; we are enabled to take advantage
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of unforeseen situations and to make the most of them. You know, personally,
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I never use a script. While I plan most of the pictures I produce myself,
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I do not 'write' them. I do supervise the work of other Keystone directors.
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Usually we assemble the company and rehearse the story. The entire action is
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gone over, and to a stenographer I outline details--minor as well as major
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ones. When we get through there is in hand a real script."
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The conversation turned to the subject of engaging players, on which it
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developed that Mr. Sennett had decided opinions. "I don't believe in luring
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players from other manufacturers," said the comedian. "When I want an actor
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I go as a rule to the stage. There's a vast number of stage people, a lot of
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them good, anxious to get into picture work. I will not employ an actor that
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is under engagement. If a picture player out of work comes to me looking for
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employment, that is another question. He is tried out until we are satisfied
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that he can bring to us the material for which we are searching. Not until
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we are satisfied is he placed in stock."...
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Mr. Sennett has been in the picture business about seven years. As will
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be remembered, his first work was with the Biograph, and with that company he
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remained five years. Before that he was for seven or eight years on the
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stage. When the comedian was asked if he had in contemplation any changes in
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the product of the Keystone, he admitted that he had.
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"We intend to try steadily to improve our productions and also from time
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to time to change the character of the work," he said. "We are nearing the
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stage where we want to advance the scope of our subjects--not that the public
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shows any indications of being tired of Keystone stuff, but we desire to
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anticipate the wishes of the public, to keep ahead of the times. We are
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considering entering a new field. It is, of course, in these days a
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difficult thing to do, but we prefer to be progressive now rather than have
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these steps forced upon us later.
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"In spite of the fact that we spend a great deal of money on our
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pictures, we intend to spend more. It is our view that to be stingy in
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making pictures is to pursue a policy that is penny wise and pound foolish.
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A poor way to make money is to try to save it out of the film. No, I do not
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think the European war will materially affect the sales of Keystone.
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In fact, it may increase rather than decrease them.
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"You know our method of making pictures is different from that of many.
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We have no stated time for making a production. If three weeks are necessary
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to film a certain subject and we find on examining it that it will be
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stronger as a single reel than a multiple, we cut it down to the thousand
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feet. We believe the money well invested. We just say to ourselves that we
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will give the exhibitor a treat this week at our expense. So it is that a
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lot of our subjects run into high figures, but we feel by so doing we are
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making more friends for Keystone.
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"It is no easy matter to get a job with our company. A player knows,
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though, that once he is in stock he is there to stay and I believe it
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improves his efficiency all around. He knows he has been tried out, and he
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feels secure."
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The Keystone producer said he would be in New York probably until the
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end of the week--August 8.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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May 1915
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Harry C. Carr
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PHOTOPLAY
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Mack Sennett -- Laugh Tester
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A big shaggy man with a splendid leonine head is sitting at a desk in an
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office, surrounded by stenographers, desk telephones, filing cabinets and all
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the rest of the junk that stands for business system. In rushes an agitated
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moving picture director.
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"Say," he demands, "Would it be funny if the policeman fell out of the
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window onto a cactus plant?"
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"It would not," answers the shaggy man with finality.
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Exit the moving picture director.
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The great white chief of the Keystone Company has spoken.
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There are men who can bite a tea leaf and tell you whether it came from
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a tea plant up on the far slopes of the Himalayas where the borders of the
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British are guarded by the Gourkas, or whether it was sealed in Ceylon.
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There are others who can taste whisky and tell when it ceased to be corn in
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the ear. Other experts can detect a bogus bill by the feel as it touches
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their fingers. Mack Sennett is the world's best laugh tester. He can bite
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into a joke and tell whether it is really funny or just a sort of bogus funny
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as accurately as the whisky taster can tell the year of distilling.
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Sennett is one of the towering personalities of the moving picture
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world. There are ten producing companies in the Keystone and a herd of
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comedians. Sennett is literally all ten companies and most of the comedians.
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Every comedy of the enormous output of the Keystone has been both written and
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acted by Sennett before it leaves the factor.
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His extraordinary methods can best be shown by chasing him through a
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picture.
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We will assume that the scenario has been written by one of the "kept"
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scenario writers who work on salary for the company. Sennett says that about
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fifty outside scenarios are received every day and fifty returned.
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"It is the rarest thing in the world to find a real idea in the mail,"
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says Sennett. "If we find even the germ of an idea in any scenario, we buy
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it and ask the writer for more. But nearly all those sent to us are merely
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silly strings of crazy incidents. It is not possible to be really funny
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without being logical. You will notice in our wildest rough comedies that
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the story has probability and sequence. Take even that trained snake that
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pulled a man up a cliff in one of our comedies. If you had a trained snake,
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it would be a most practical and excellent way of rescuing yourself from a
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precipice.
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"Good comedies are so rare that even our hired scenario writers seldom
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turn out a perfect one.
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"The way to write a good moving picture comedy is first to get your
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idea; you will find that either in sex or crime. Those two fields are the
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great feeding grounds of funny ideas.
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"Having found your hub idea, you build out the spokes; those are the
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natural developments that your imagination will suggest. Then introduce your
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complications--that makes up the funny wheel.
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"If I could find a writer who could do this with success--that is to say
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one I could trust to turn out two comedies a week in such shape that I could
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hand them out to the directors without going over them myself, he could name
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his own salary. I mean that literally. He could prepare his own salary
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vouchers. That is how rare good comedy writers are.
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"We have tried famous humorists and I can say with feeling that their
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stuff is about the worst we get. Every writer to whom we talk about
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scenarios is very airy and off-hand about it. 'Oh yes,' he says, 'I get you.
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What you want is just a lot of action.' Which is just what we don't want.
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What we want is a real idea--a logical, compelling idea. We will add the
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action."
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Having found something that looks to him like a funny idea, Sennett goes
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over to a corner of the big studio, where, chalked on the board floor are the
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locales he intends to use. Lakes into which comedians are going to fall--
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rooms--fire escapes, etc., all indicated on the floor. There, among the
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chalk marks, he and the comedians work out every comedy situation. Not only
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do they plan all the situations and the business, but Sennett acts out every
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scene and shows how he thinks nearly every actor should do his part.
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No one but a man with stage technique at his finger tips and a mind
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sizzling with pep and ideas could do this. There are few picture directors
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with the necessary physical strength.
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Sennett has big heavy shoulders and a frame like a sailor. His shaggy
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hair and quick strong gestures speak of enormous reserve power. He is so
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full of pep that he acts out half a dozen comedies when he talks to you in
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his club.
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His equipment has been thorough. He bumped the bumps in burlesque
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vaudeville, musical comedy, melodrama and all the rest of it.
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"I never succeeded very well on the stage," he confesses. "I never
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could agree with the directors. It always seemed to me that they made
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mistakes in dragging in situations for the sake of getting a laugh.
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I thought their comedy was too forced. They didn't let us act naturally.
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I was glad to go into moving pictures for the sake of trying out my own
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ideas. They seemed to have justified my complaints against the directors
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under whom I worked. If you want to make people really laugh--laugh all over-
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-you must convince them."
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Well, we will return to the chalk marks on the stage.
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Sennett is showing the actors how he thinks it ought to be done. He has
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shown them to such good effect that some of them have become famous in the
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process. One of the actors he is showing is a very pretty girl bubbling over
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with the fun of the thing they are doing; that is Mabel Normand.
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"When Miss Normand first came to my company," said Sennett in his club
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the other night, "She got such a small salary that I can't think of any word
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short enough to tell about it. Now she gets the second or third highest
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salary paid in the picture business.
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"Miss Normand is such a wonderful success even more on account of her
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head than her good looks. She is quick as a flash and just naturally funny.
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She is funny to talk to. She seems to think in sparks."
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Sennett was asked if Miss Normand didn't have troubles like other people
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learning to act. "Worse," he said. "The trouble with her was inducing her
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to keep quiet. Like most girls with quick thoughts, she acted quickly. She
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moved so quickly that the audience couldn't get it. Deliberation and poise
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were the lessons she had to learn. It was a tough job getting her to slow
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down. After that, she took up the problem of getting what I call 'man
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comedy'--that is, the repressed stuff. Not just flying around but sitting
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still and showing the changing thoughts on one's face.
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"A somewhat similar development was that of Roscoe Arbuckle of our
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company--our fat man. We got him in the beginning because he was the rare
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combination of fat and perfect athlete. Arbuckle is a wonderful athlete in
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spite of his weight. We got him on account of the falls he could make.
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Every week he has been developing. I can see the difference in every picture
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we turn out. He began as a rough 'faller' and he has become a finished
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artist. And he is still going."
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Miss Normand and Arbuckle and all the rest of them were trained over
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there among the chalk marks on the floor. That chalked-off patch of flooring
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may be said to be the post graduate college of moving picture comedy.
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Sennett says that the great problem at this stage of the comedy is to
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plan effects so they appear to have "just happened." Their highest efforts
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are put upon the accidents. The stubbing of a toe, the tomato that hits the
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wrong man, are planned with the utmost care. Some actors fail utterly
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because they can't help showing that they expect the accident that is to get
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the laugh. Every move of the Keystone policemen, who seem to dash around at
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wild random, is planned down to the finest detail.
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While they are working out the stuff on the chalk marks, there is one
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busy citizen. This is Sennett's stenographer. He is the best acrobat in the
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Keystone organization; has to be. While Sennett dashes hither and yon
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around the chalk marks, the stenographer dashes around after him. Every word
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of the "chief's" directions are taken down in short hand.
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Finally they have worked it out, down to the last detail among the chalk
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lakes and streets. The stenographer then transcribes his notes.
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The next day, these notes and the necessary actors are turned over to a
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sub-director who turns the chalk lakes into real ones. The sub-director
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makes the stenographer's notes come true. He works out in film form the
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business that has been planned on the chalked stage.
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So much territory is used in one of the Keystone comedies that it takes
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a week or so to work it out. By this singular method Sennett is able to
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direct the whole thing in miniature in a few hours.
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By this method he personally directs the scenarios of all his ten or
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twelve companies. In a short time Keystone intends adding ten or twelve more
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and Sennett will also direct these. His will be the mind behind every
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scenario.
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It is of course impossible to anticipate on the chalked floor all the
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details that come up when the real work is done.
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For this reason, as Sennett sits in his office, a constant stream of
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moving picture directors are dashing in upon him.
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He will be talking scenarios with a writer when a director dashes in and
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"puts up to the chief" some intricate question of comedy effect. This the
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ancient ceremony called "Passing the buck."
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Right off the reel, Sennett will be called upon to accept or reject some
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idea that will make or break an expensive production. These interruptions
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would just about drive the average man crazy.
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But like many men of excessive vitality and perception. Sennett has
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trained the mind to switch on or off like a dynamo.
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He says he has trained himself to switch from one thing to another
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without the slightest feeling of irritation.
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"The secret of it," he says, "is in the doctrine of non-resistance.
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If you think to yourself 'I wish this fellow would not cut in on my work,'
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you are hopelessly lost. The salvation of your nerves is to surrender
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yourself to any one who wants your attention. The reason that people get on
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the average man's nerves is that he gets on his own nerves. I don't get on
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my own nerves. Impatience or irritability would kill all the pep in
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sensitive, high-strung people such as I have to do with."
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In due course of time, the actors come back with a few bumps and a
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feeling of elation at work well done and the "makings" of a film. The next
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job is the projection room.
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Sennett cuts all the film sent out by the Keystone. He is a hard
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cutter. Only about one-forth of the film made ever sees a public screen.
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That is to say, for every four feet of film taken, one foot is used and three
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feet thrown away.
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This stage is, after all, the supreme test of the director. It is at
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this point that he has to show an almost uncanny instinct for gauging the
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public taste.
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The "legitimate" stage director can correct his mistakes. The first
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performance of every farce comedy is an experiment. He tries the play the
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first night. Some of the funny situations "get over;" some don't. Those
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that do not are cut out or changed. The moving picture comedy director has
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no such safety valve. The only test he has for what will make the public
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laugh is his own intuitive sense. He puts on what he thinks is funny and it
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has to stand. He seldom has any very definite means of finding out just
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which parts the public liked and which parts failed of appeal.
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Sennett's years on the stage, hearing audiences laugh, stand him well
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now.
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Having seen Sennett the scenario maker, the actor and the film cutter,
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we take a look at Sennett the business man.
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"I feel sorry for the men who are trying to break into the picture
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game," he said. "It is getting harder every year. To begin now at the
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beginning and come in competition with the directors who have learned through
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long and hard experience will be an ordeal to try any man's courage.
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"The great difficulty of mastering the moving picture business is
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keeping up with the constant changes. These come with incredible rapidity.
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You can understand how rapid are these changes when I tell you that we
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couldn't possibly put over today the comedies we were producing with success
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six months ago. They made a big hit six months ago but are entirely out of
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style now.
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"Rough horse play has suddenly vanished from moving picture comedy.
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"The moving picture comedy now demands subtle effects. Let me cite you
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a typical scene.
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"A man is sitting in a hotel parlor. At one end of the room is sitting
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his affinity with her escort; at his side sits his wife. He is trying to
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show devotion to his wife without letting the affinity know he is married and
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to beam upon the affinity without letting his wife suspect. He just sits
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there. The comedy consists of the changes on his face. That takes real art;
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it also takes real scenarios; also takes real directing. This was the stuff
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at which Charlie Chaplin excelled.
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"There is a lot of money to be made in pictures--fortunes. But it takes
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great judgment and a game spender. No one who stops to think about the cost
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can ever succeed. The cost is simply not to be taken into consideration.
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"For instance there are four people on the payroll of the Keystone
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company who, just one year ago, were getting three dollars a day. Now they
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are each under contract at a salary of $10,000 apiece. We consider them
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cheap at the price.
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"The moving picture business is the business for a man who is up on his
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toes and thinking fast."
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 21, 1922
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CHICAGO HERALD-EXAMINER
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Sennett Here, Defends Mabel
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William Desmond Taylor, Los Angeles motion picture director, was killed
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by "somebody with a grudge," Mack Sennett, producer and employer of Mabel
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Normand, said yesterday as he passed through Chicago on his way to New York.
|
|
When he reached Chicago from Los Angeles he had a prepared statement to
|
|
issue but sought to evade being interviewed. Some throat trouble, he said,
|
|
had "gotten the best" of him. Later, however, he discussed the Taylor case
|
|
verbally.
|
|
"There are only two tenable theories," he said. Either Taylor was
|
|
killed by Sands, his former valet, or by somebody who held an ancient grudge
|
|
against him. Find Sands. He holds the key to the murder.
|
|
"Taylor was not killed by a woman, at least a woman in the movie
|
|
profession. I knew Taylor well and I knew who his intimates were. Mabel
|
|
Normand was not in love with him. Taylor was cultured, refined, genteel.
|
|
He was beloved by all the young women in the movie profession who knew him.
|
|
"But love--it's out of the question. Taylor was not killed because of a
|
|
love affair."
|
|
Mr. Sennett's formal statement follows.
|
|
"When I left Los Angeles the apprehension of the assassin of William
|
|
Desmond Taylor was no nearer than at the beginning of the case. The whole
|
|
industry is bent on clearing up the mystery. Personally, I volunteered
|
|
financially to aid in the capture of the guilty person and I hope they get
|
|
him and darn quick at that.
|
|
"I do not know of a single person in moving pictures in Los Angeles who
|
|
has not done all that could be done to capture the assassin. People working
|
|
in moving pictures respected Taylor and feel a personal and vengeful desire
|
|
to see the person who killed him brought to justice. That is the spirit I
|
|
have seen in Los Angeles.
|
|
"Mabel Normand's present depression is due to the normal and natural
|
|
reaction of losing a very excellent, charming man friend, a friend whom I as
|
|
her employer was delighted to have her make. Although I knew Taylor but
|
|
slightly, I was glad for her to know so fine a gentleman and I thought him
|
|
very fine society for her to keep.
|
|
"Miss Normand is known to all as a charming and sweet girl, whose chief
|
|
fault, if she has one, is that she is generous to a high degree. Her gifts
|
|
to charity, her loans and kindnesses are well known in Los Angeles. It is
|
|
unfortunate that she should have been the last person to see Mr. Taylor
|
|
alone.
|
|
"Yet she rushed into the work of trying to clear up the mystery with a
|
|
characteristic spirit and frankness. All along she has thought more of
|
|
apprehending the murderer than in shielding her own name from publicity.
|
|
"Her position is one that anyone friendly to Mr. Taylor might have had
|
|
thrust upon them--unfortunate coincidence that she and her chauffeur should
|
|
have been the last to see him.
|
|
"As her employer, I have a strong professional interest in her success
|
|
and in having the public know the truth about her. I have no theory as to
|
|
who the guilty party might be."
|
|
Traveling with Mr. Sennett to New York were Thomas Ince, movie producer,
|
|
and Mrs. Ince.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
February 20, 1922
|
|
CHICAGO AMERICAN
|
|
Find Sands, Says Producer
|
|
|
|
"Edward Sands, former valet of William D. Taylor, holds the solution of
|
|
the mystery which now surrounds the murder of his former employer," said Mack
|
|
Sennett, movie director and present employer of Mabel Normand, upon his
|
|
arrival in Chicago today.
|
|
"All the facts--and don't mistake that word 'facts,' not 'theories'--
|
|
point to the crime having been committed by a man. If Sands did not commit
|
|
the crime he knows who did.
|
|
"There was no love tangle or triangle. All these stories of a star's
|
|
revenge for unrequited love, dope parties, jealousy, etc., might make good
|
|
movie plots and interesting reading, but they are dangerous to the solution
|
|
of this crime, because they divert attention from the main path leading to
|
|
the murderer which is supported by facts.
|
|
"I would be no more surprised if this building collapsed on me than I
|
|
would be to learn that a woman did the deed. It is a ridiculous theory--one
|
|
entirely unsupported by facts."...
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
February 22, 1922
|
|
NEW YORK AMERICAN
|
|
Sennett Not Here to Look for Sands
|
|
|
|
Mack Sennett, producer of the Mabel Normand moving pictures, arrived
|
|
here yesterday from Los Angeles. He is one of the prominent members of the
|
|
Hollywood colony who have been questioned by the investigators into the
|
|
murder on February 1 last of William Desmond Taylor, movie director.
|
|
Sennett made a vigorous defense of Miss Normand and of the morals of
|
|
Hollywood. He denied a report that he had come East to try to find Edward F.
|
|
Sands, former valet to Taylor, who is suspected by the Los Angeles police.
|
|
He made this statement in an interview:
|
|
"A great injustice has been done Miss Normand. It was an unfortunate
|
|
coincidence that she happened to be the last person, besides her chauffeur,
|
|
known to have seen Taylor alive.
|
|
"She went to the bungalow to get a book. That has been established by
|
|
the authorities. In the motion picture colony everybody is certain she knows
|
|
nothing about how Taylor met his death. She is a hard worker and a
|
|
conscientious artist.
|
|
"I know positively that at the present moment Miss Normand is doing
|
|
everything she can to help the authorities solve the mystery.
|
|
"If I knew who killed Taylor I would seek the $4,500 in rewards that
|
|
have been offered. I would give the information, for that matter, without
|
|
thought of the reward. All of us in Hollywood want to do all we can to solve
|
|
the case.
|
|
"The people in our movie colony, men and women, are very hard workers.
|
|
They work from early morning until late afternoon and often into the night.
|
|
They have to look after their health. They have to preserve their personal
|
|
appearances to be successful. Despite what has been printed to the contrary,
|
|
there are certain ideals that they live up to. The majority of them live
|
|
good lives, are domestic in their habits and are most charitable. Why single
|
|
out the few and blame all?
|
|
"I knew Taylor only slightly. I am told he was a high-class type of man
|
|
and was respected."
|
|
The producer, who arrived with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Ince, is at the
|
|
Hotel Ambassador.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
November 10, 1924
|
|
Don Ryan
|
|
LOS ANGELES RECORD
|
|
Sennett Says It
|
|
|
|
On a visit to his studio the other day I asked Mack Sennett what
|
|
constitutes the art of the movies.
|
|
"Why," he replied, without any hesitation, "you've gotta slap 'em down
|
|
good."
|
|
Mr. Sennett is one who brings to contemplation of his art none of the
|
|
factitious ideals inspired in our serious critics by reading the essays of
|
|
Cecil DeMille's press agent in the daily journals. And slapstick comedy as
|
|
produced by Mr. Sennett is the only art worthy of the name that has emerged
|
|
from the movies to date.
|
|
Slapstick is real genre. The wistful irony of Chaplin's creation: a
|
|
small, oppressed individual, becoming more ridiculous as he tries to maintain
|
|
his dignity amidst overwhelming catastropher; and, under the same
|
|
circumstances, the cheeky Americanism of a Harold Lloyd, the immovable
|
|
gravity of a Buster Keaton, the childish absurdity of a Ben Turpin--these
|
|
qualities are art. Or at least they go to make up something that is an art,
|
|
because it is a perfect accomplishment in its own peculiar medium.
|
|
"These highbrow movies," Mr. Sennett told me, "are uncertain. But with
|
|
a comedy there's just one test. Did they laugh? If they did--it's art."
|
|
Thanks to the demiurge who presides over the future of art in America,
|
|
Mr. Sennett has abandoned the stupid melodramas which disgraced his only
|
|
incursion into the serious movies, and has gone back to the two-reel
|
|
slapstick comedies that made him famous. He has gone back--with
|
|
restrictions. The idea of romance still sticks in his head. His method now
|
|
is to contrast the idyllic with the grotesque; the pastoral with the violent;
|
|
the sentimental with a burlesque counterpart of itself.
|
|
Such perhaps is the natural arc of the ascending medium. Nothing stands
|
|
still, certainly not the movies. I suppose we cannot justly have expected
|
|
slapstick to fix itself sempiternally in that mold given form by the
|
|
delightful antics of the Keystone cops. The Keystone cops are no more.
|
|
As Mr. Sennett explained:
|
|
"Well, the real cops began to get pretty sore. Said why did we kid law
|
|
and order all the time. Somebody even accused us of being Bolsheviks. That
|
|
wouldn't do. Besides, we began to get new ideas. Other things came along--
|
|
new gags--new characters. The comedies keep changing like everything else,
|
|
but the principle remains the same. You've gotta slap 'em down good!"
|
|
If there is anything in the movies about which I could grow sentimental
|
|
it would be the old Sennett lot. The Sennett studio at 1712 Glendale
|
|
Boulevard--in what has become a half-residence, half-factory region--is the
|
|
oldest studio still operating in Los Angeles. Through the years it has been
|
|
built up by additions of rooms, sheds, stages, wings, ells, towers, stories
|
|
and super-structures, until it has become the modern counterpart of a
|
|
medieval castle.
|
|
The flavor of the Sennett studio is its charming vulgarity. Nobody
|
|
pretends to be anything except himself. The Sennett studio is the only one
|
|
in existence that maintains a tradition, the stronger because it is
|
|
unconscious. It is like the great workshop of some craftsmaster of the
|
|
renaissance, wherein his apprentices carry on--work, eat, dally, and enjoy
|
|
life--under the beneficent eye of the master. A Rabelaisian mood prevails--
|
|
cordial, gustful, warming the heart as with a flavor of good wine and mutton
|
|
roasting on spits before the open hearth.
|
|
In the upper story of the castle keep, overlooking the entrance, is the
|
|
master's quarters. The office reminds one of the interior of a private
|
|
Pullman: long, narrow, paneled in cheery wood in the manner of Pullman cars,
|
|
and equipped with bright brass cuspidors.
|
|
Here I was received by Mr. Sennett with a handclasp that made me dance.
|
|
A bulking, square figure, deep-chested, red-faced, dark hair beginning to
|
|
gray, strong jaws enjoying a chew of scrap tobacco. An Irish policeman--if
|
|
ever one stepped out of a uniform. But this genius who would have made an
|
|
excellent policeman, then an alderman, then a mayor, chose rather to be a
|
|
comedian, then a director, then a producer. Fame and fortune lay in either
|
|
course, but for the sake of art let us rejoice that Mr. Sennett stayed out of
|
|
politics.
|
|
I asked him about the early days of the comedies. He related how the
|
|
Biograph chiefs looked with fear and disfavor on his first efforts at
|
|
slapstick.
|
|
"Why," he chortled, "I was slated to be canned at the finish of every
|
|
picture. They used to say, 'Can't you be funny without being so rough?'
|
|
"'No,' I'd tell 'em, 'I can't. You've gotta get the laughs, haven't
|
|
you. Well, what do you want me to do, have the girl stick her toe in the
|
|
brook and make moon eyes at the boy across the way? Bah! It won't work.
|
|
You've gotta slap 'em down good!'
|
|
"When these comedies where shown in England they seemed to catch on.
|
|
Funny, it was the English audiences that saved my job. I'd have been fired
|
|
if the slapstick stuff hadn't started to make money across the pond right
|
|
away."
|
|
Mr. Sennett organized the Keystone Comedy company in New York. Then
|
|
came Chaplin.
|
|
"Fred Mace was going to quit me," said Mr. Sennett. "He'd been offered
|
|
more dough than I could pay. I tried to coax him to stick, but there was
|
|
nothing doing. Then I remembered a little Englishman I'd seen one night at
|
|
Morris' three-a-day on the American roof. I hired Chaplin.
|
|
"He didn't have that make-up he uses now. That was assembled in the
|
|
costume department on this lot. The same room you can see down there."
|
|
The Keystone company had moved to California seeking sunshine.
|
|
"Chaplin tried out several different make-ups. The first he used was a
|
|
drunk--man in evening clothes, about fifty years old, with a red nose. The
|
|
first make-ups didn't go very well. We kept on experimenting. In the early
|
|
days we comedians used to put on new make-ups and run around the stage to see
|
|
if we could get a laugh from the rest of the gang. We were just like a lot
|
|
of kids. Used to bring out mattresses and practice falls. Say, did you
|
|
every try to fall straight back and keep your hands at your sides? Pure
|
|
relaxation. That's the secret of the acting profession. It goes for tragedy
|
|
just the same as for comedy, too."
|
|
I recalled how all the funniest comedians practiced this maxim of their
|
|
preceptor; how, in the midst of the most exciting circumstances they always
|
|
wear that ridiculous air of relaxation, of complete detachment, and how much
|
|
funnier it makes them.
|
|
"There is more of a story in the comedy we make now," Mr. Sennett summed
|
|
up. "Instead of putting in gags just to get laughs, we let the gags grow out
|
|
of the plot. The situation suggests the business. But the principle remains
|
|
the same," he concluded genially. "It's what I told 'em in the beginning and
|
|
it's what I tell you now. You can talk about the art of the movies and all
|
|
that, but the one thing to remember, and believe me, it's mighty important,
|
|
and that is:
|
|
"You've gotta slap 'em down good!"
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
August 1928
|
|
Theodore Dreiser
|
|
PHOTOPLAY
|
|
The Best Motion Picture Interview Ever Written
|
|
|
|
The Great American Master of Tragedy Brilliantly Interviews
|
|
the Great American Master of Comedy
|
|
|
|
My admiration for Mack Sennett is temperamental and chronic. I think it
|
|
dates from that long ago when he played the moony, semi-conscious farm hand,
|
|
forsaken by the sweetly pretty little milkmaid for some burlesque city
|
|
slicker, with oiled hair and a bushy mustache. And it endures today when he
|
|
is a multi-millionaire, the owner of a moving picture studio with some twenty-
|
|
two or twenty-four stages, and an established reputation as the producer of
|
|
comedy of a burlesque type. For to me his is a real creative force in the
|
|
cinema world--a master at interpreting the crude primary impulses of the dub,
|
|
the numbskull, the weakling, failure, clown, boor, coward, bully. The
|
|
interpretive burlesque he achieves is no different from that of Shakespeare,
|
|
Voltaire, Shaw or Dickens, when they are out to achieve humorous effects by
|
|
burlesquing humanity. To be sure, these others move away from burlesque to
|
|
greater ends. It is merely an incident in a great canvas. With Sennett it
|
|
is quite the whole canvas. But within his range, what a master! He is
|
|
Rabelaisian, he is Voltairish. He has characteristics in common with Sterne,
|
|
Swift, Shaw, Dickens--where they seek to catch the very thing which he
|
|
catches. Positively, if any writer of this age had brought together in
|
|
literary form--and in readable English--instead of upon the screen as has
|
|
Sennett--the pie-throwers, soup-spillers, bomb-tossers, hot-stove-stealers,
|
|
and what not else of Mr. Sennett's grotesqueries--what a reputation! The
|
|
respect! The acclaim! As it is, there exists today among the most knowing
|
|
of those who seek a picture of life as it is--or might be were it not for
|
|
these inherent human buffooneries which Mr. Sennett so clearly recognizes and
|
|
captures--a happy and sane tendency to evaluate him properly.
|
|
And so, for the past fifteen or eighteen years--whenever and wherever I
|
|
have seen the name of Mack Sennett posted above a movie, I have been tempted
|
|
and all too frequently possibly have succumbed to an incurable desire to
|
|
witness his latest antic waggeries. The bridges, fences, floors, sidewalks,
|
|
walls, that give way under the most unbelievable and impossible
|
|
circumstances. The shirt-collars that, too tightly drawn, in attempts to
|
|
button them, take flight like birds--the shacks (like the one in Chaplin's
|
|
"Gold Rush") which spin before the wind, only to pause, with a form of comic
|
|
terror for all, at the edge of a precipice, there to teeter and torture all
|
|
within--trains or street cars or automobiles that collide with trucks and by
|
|
sheer impact transfer whole groups of passengers to new routes and new
|
|
directions! Positively, as I have often told myself at such times and
|
|
countless others, are not these nonsensicalities but variations of that age-
|
|
old formula that underlies all humor--the inordinate inflation of fancy to
|
|
heights where reason can only laughingly follow; the filliping of the normal
|
|
fancy with the abnormal? I think so. And Mr. Sennett has been for these
|
|
past twenty years or more--and still remains--the master of that.
|
|
Thus when the opportunity came to interview him I seized upon it with
|
|
avidity. And in the Ambassador Hotel in New York, after many cautious
|
|
preliminaries on the part of a representative, there he stood in perhaps his
|
|
workaday, official mood. It was arranged that I was to meet him for luncheon
|
|
and so he came--a somewhat stocky and yet well-knit, gray person, with a
|
|
touch of the careless in his appearance and an eye gray and soft, yet
|
|
suggesting a forceful, searching intellect behind it and one that might on
|
|
occasion have a granitic quality; yet with a sagging, half-lackadaisical
|
|
manner, which, none-the-less, as one might well know, could be a manner only.
|
|
And guarded by a business manager--shrewd, pleasant, friendly sort of person,
|
|
watchful of his employer's interests on this occasion, yet helpful to both of
|
|
us in a genial way. This is the individual, as I understood it afterward,
|
|
who writes most of those startling captions that help to edge the whirligig
|
|
humor of Sennett's productions.
|
|
"Just a canceled stamp in the post-office of life."
|
|
"--and as hungry as a sparrow at a Scotch picnic."
|
|
"--so stupid he thought pickled herring ought to be reported to the dry
|
|
squad."
|
|
"He believed that woman's place was in the home and not in the English
|
|
channel."
|
|
"Call for my laundry at my apartment--it's just a little step-in."
|
|
"--and so dumb she thought a meadow lark was a picnic."
|
|
"--and so stupid he thought an oyster bed was where fish slept."
|
|
Boldly and courageously I started the ball rolling by asking: "Just what
|
|
excuse have you to offer, Mr. Sennett, for one more of your comedies?"
|
|
And then, to my real amusement and astonishment, I saw a faint flush
|
|
steal over his face--the face of the, to me, greatest creator of joyful
|
|
burlesque the world has ever known. Instantly I was moved to abandon the
|
|
pose back of the question, but was forestalled by the Irish adequateness to
|
|
resist any blow, which is his to a terrifying degree.
|
|
"Well, now, that reminds me of a row I once saw in one of the streets up
|
|
here in Harlem. Two men were fighting. An Irish policeman came up to stop
|
|
it, but couldn't get the hang of it by watching. So finally he grabbed the
|
|
nearest one by the neck and shook him until he was dizzy. Then, as soon as
|
|
he let him go, he said: 'Now what's all this about?' And that's how I feel
|
|
now."
|
|
"But there's still the question," I persisted teasingly.
|
|
"Well, you can't tell," he said. "It may be that I think that stuff's
|
|
funny."
|
|
"Acquitted on the grounds of delusion," I said. "But there's still
|
|
something worse. You're here to give a complete reason for your being--the
|
|
artistic faith that is in you. You're to tell me what you think the
|
|
intrinsic nature of comedy is--why, for instance, you prefer it to drama or
|
|
melodrama--and--"
|
|
"We made a melodrama once," he interrupted, smiling, "or started to.
|
|
I don't know whether I ought to confess that, though," he added, a boyish and
|
|
naive smile playing over his face.
|
|
"And what happened to it?"
|
|
"Well, I don't know exactly," he went on, an infectious chuckle
|
|
emanating from his throat. "We kind of got lost. We had a plot, we thought,
|
|
but when we got it worked out, people laughed when we thought they ought to
|
|
cry or shiver."
|
|
"Yes, that might have been a little disconcerting," I agreed.
|
|
"It was," he said--and in that same, dry, dubious tone that
|
|
characterizes so much of his best manner. "We tried to fix it up, make it
|
|
more sad or something. But we had to turn in into a comedy."
|
|
"What a tragedy!" I ventured.
|
|
"Yes, sir, a comic tragedy--that's what came of it at last, I think.
|
|
I scarcely remember what happened to it."
|
|
But anyone taking Mack Sennett's genial, easy manner for anything but a
|
|
front or mask behind which lurks a terrifying wisdom and executive ability
|
|
would be most easily deceived. For, looking at him as he sat there--the bulk
|
|
and girth of him--I could see the constructive energy and will, the absolute
|
|
instinct and force, which has led and permitted him to do so ably all that he
|
|
has done. It was interesting just to feel the force and the intelligence of
|
|
him, his willingness and determination to give a satisfactory account of
|
|
himself--his mental, if not emotional, satisfaction with himself--his dry,
|
|
convincing sanity that assures him to this hour--and rightly so, I think--
|
|
that his view is as good as any other.
|
|
I had read an article by one writer who said, quoting Sennett: "You have
|
|
to put in some rough stuff if you want to make them laugh. Only exaggeration
|
|
up to the nth power gets the real shout." And another quoting this same
|
|
Sennett said: "You have to spill soup on dignity to get a real burlesque
|
|
laugh." And I agree, whether Sennett said these things or not. In the world
|
|
of the commonplace, only the extraordinary, the unbelievable almost, is truly
|
|
amusing or interesting.
|
|
But let that be as it will. Here was Mr. Sennett, and most agreeably,
|
|
seeking to interpret himself. So I said, after a time:
|
|
"When you first started out years ago--but exactly when was that, if you
|
|
don't mind?"
|
|
"Oh, back in 1908 with the Old Biograph."
|
|
"And how did you come to get into that work, if it isn't too much
|
|
trouble to you?"
|
|
"Well, I was a flop in musical comedy--used to sing pretty well, but I
|
|
never could get the fancy stepping of the chorus man. So I went to work in
|
|
the Biograph pictures. They didn't make comedies then, just sentimental
|
|
romances and very meller melodramas and tragedies--what tragedies! These
|
|
were awfully funny to me; I couldn't take them seriously. I often thought
|
|
how easy it would be, with the least bit more exaggeration--and they were
|
|
exaggerated plenty as it was--to turn those old dramas into pure farce.
|
|
"I couldn't get the comedy idea out of my head and finally persuaded two
|
|
other fellows to go into partnership with me on producing comedies. We
|
|
didn't have any money, but at the time this didn't impress us as being
|
|
important."
|
|
"And so, the Keystone Comedy Company came into being, didn't it?"
|
|
"Yes. We hired a camera man and started out. That camera man--he was
|
|
the most impressive-looking camera man in the world. He looked like a
|
|
Russian grand duke and had the lofty manners of an Oriental prince. We
|
|
didn't stop to inquire whether he knew anything about cameras; we hired him
|
|
on the strength of his grand ducal whiskers."
|
|
"And how about your first studio?"
|
|
"We didn't have any studio. We just carried the cameras and props on
|
|
our shoulders and started off somewhere on a street car. Usually we hung
|
|
around near Fort George."
|
|
"My God," I exclaimed sadly, "of all places."
|
|
"Yes," went on Sennett solemnly, "and we had so little money that we had
|
|
to make three comedies before we had the film of the first one developed; we
|
|
could get it done cheaper that way, you see. And I remember how proudly we
|
|
went into the projecting room to see our maiden effort; and how we came out
|
|
staggering with dismay. The grand ducal camera man hadn't turned the crank
|
|
fast enough, and consequently the picture didn't move--it leaped in wild and
|
|
fantastic kangaroo bounds!"
|
|
"Like some of your best comedians since?"
|
|
"Yes, like some of my best ones since. But to go on. There was nothing
|
|
to do but thrown the stuff away and start all over again. By this time we
|
|
were flat broke. We made a pool of all our watches and stickpins and got
|
|
together enough money to go to California. I brought two actors West with
|
|
me, the two business partners remained in New York.
|
|
"When we arrived in Los Angeles, I wandered out to an unfrequented part
|
|
of town where the families kept goats in their back yards. I rented a vacant
|
|
lot and had a little shanty put up. This was my first studio and the little
|
|
shack is still standing there in the middle of our twenty-two acres of
|
|
studios in Edendale. I guess I'll never tear that shanty down.
|
|
"It took a lot of physical endurance to get through the work I undertook
|
|
in those days," he went on reminiscently. "Every morning when the
|
|
bricklayers were going to work I went out to the 'studio' and got the props
|
|
ready for the day's work. We made new sets by pasting some wall paper over
|
|
the old ones.
|
|
"All day I acted in my pictures myself and directed, too. At night when
|
|
the other actors had gone home, I stuck around late cutting the film shot the
|
|
previous day. I was telephone operator, bookkeeper, actor, director,
|
|
publicity man and film cutter. It was a job.
|
|
"Finally I shipped the first comedy to my partners in the East. Their
|
|
verdict was prompt. 'Terrible,' they wired me. I took a cinch in my belt
|
|
and started another comedy, which was eventually shipped. The answer was
|
|
just as prompt: 'Worse.'
|
|
"I wonder now that I didn't lose heart entirely, especially with money
|
|
by this time being as scarce as hen's teeth. Then I got a 'break,' as we now
|
|
call it. It happened that the G. A. R. was holding a convention in Los
|
|
Angeles and there was a great parade. As a last desperate chance I
|
|
photographed this parade; took some comic scenes to fill in and made a war
|
|
comedy. This time the message that came back from New York was: 'Great.'
|
|
"It was easy from then on."
|
|
And it was pleasing to see him sit and cogitate in a pleasant April
|
|
manner in regard to his own past. And none of the hardened granite that one
|
|
suspects in his nature from time to time showing in his words or eyes.
|
|
Instead, nothing but Rabelaisian gaiety and vitality.
|
|
"But to return to my first question--your artistic excuse for being--the
|
|
animating faith that is in you?" I said, after he had finished all this.
|
|
He stared unblinkingly, the blue-grey of his Irish eyes fronting me like
|
|
two milky, unrevealing crystals.
|
|
"My artistic reason for being! The faith that is in me! I guess I
|
|
never thought of those things when I started out, but I can give a fair
|
|
answer now, I think. Everyone wants to laugh at something. Mostly at other
|
|
people's troubles, if they're not too rough."
|
|
"But you never thought of that when you started, you say?"
|
|
"Oh, I must have--as a comedy idea--but not as a philosophy," was his
|
|
prompt reply.
|
|
"And you still adhere to it?"
|
|
"Something uncomfortable happening to the other fellow, but not too
|
|
uncomfortable? Yes. Things must go wrong, but not too wrong. And to some
|
|
fellow that you feel reasonably sure can't be too much injured by it--just
|
|
enough to make you laugh--not enough to make you feel sad or cry. And always
|
|
in some kind of a story that could be told very differently if one wanted to
|
|
be serious, but that you don't want to be serious about, see?"
|
|
"I see. But years ago, when you started, the type of comedy you
|
|
produced was decidedly crude, wasn't it? I recall the hot stoves on which
|
|
people fell, the hot soup that steamed down their backs, the vats of plaster,
|
|
or tar, or soap, that they fell into; the furniture, walls, ceilings, even
|
|
houses, that fell on them; the horses, wagons, trains that ran over them.
|
|
Any change in that respect?"
|
|
"Well, no. I don't know that there is any actual change in the kind of
|
|
burlesque that makes people laugh, although there is some, I guess, in the
|
|
way it's presented. For instance, ten or fifteen or twenty years ago, a man
|
|
might sit on a hot stove longer than he would today and without the audience
|
|
stopping laughing. Or, maybe, trains could hit him and all in the same
|
|
picture. Fifteen years ago the settings could be cruder than they are today,
|
|
and a waiter in shirt sleeves and no collar could spill soup down the shirt
|
|
front of a laborer and get a laugh, and that in some ordinary one-armed place
|
|
not very nice to look at today. Today an American comedy audience seems to
|
|
want better surroundings or settings. And if the waiter is of the Ritz or
|
|
Ambassador type, the customer a gentleman in evening clothes--or a lord--so
|
|
much the better! But the spilling of the soup remains the same. It has to
|
|
be sort of rough trouble for the other fellow in burlesque, or no laugh."
|
|
And here Mr. Sennett interpolated a bit of reminiscence out of his old
|
|
Biograph days. It appears that when he first began to make comedies in
|
|
opposition to the melodramas of the hour, the Biograph chiefs looked on them
|
|
with doubt and disfavor. "'They're too rough,' they said. 'Too many people
|
|
fall downstairs or out of windows, or get shot or run over. Can't you be
|
|
funny without being so rough?' 'No,' I told them, 'I can't. You've got to
|
|
get the laughs, haven't you?' And then I'd show them that you couldn't reach
|
|
the crowd by refined comedy. If you wanted the big crowds and the big
|
|
laughs, you had to have the stuff a little rough. And, as I say, except for
|
|
dressing the actors and the scenes a little better today, there isn't so much
|
|
change."
|
|
One of the things I was moved to ask at this point was, slapstick being
|
|
what it is, was there any limit to the forms or manifestations of this humor?
|
|
And to my surprise, yes, there was an is.
|
|
"No joke about a mother ever gets a laugh," he insisted most
|
|
dogmatically. "We've tried that, and we know. You can't joke about a mother
|
|
in even the lightest, mildest way. If you do, the audience sits there cold,
|
|
and you get no hand. It may not be angry--we wouldn't put in stuff about a
|
|
mother that an audience could take offense at--but, on the other hand, it is
|
|
not moved to laugh--doesn't want to--and no laughs, no money. So mothers in
|
|
that sense are out. You have to use them for sentiment or atmosphere in
|
|
burlesque."
|
|
"In other words, hats off to the American mother," I said, thinking of
|
|
that sterling epitome of America--"Processional." "But not so with fathers,"
|
|
I added, after a time.
|
|
"Oh, fathers," he said dryly. "No. You can do anything you want to
|
|
with them. Father's one of the best butts we have. You can do anything but
|
|
kill him on the stage."
|
|
"And as for the dear mother-in-law," I interjected.
|
|
"Better yet. Best of all, unless it is an old maid."
|
|
"No quarter for old maids, eh?"
|
|
"Not a cent. A free field and no favors where they're concerned. You
|
|
can do anything this side of torture and get a laugh."
|
|
In silence I began to brood over the human or inhuman psychology of
|
|
that, but got nowhere for want of time. After all, Mr. Sennett was being
|
|
interviewed, and I had to go on.
|
|
"Tell me one thing," I asked. "You used to act most amusingly. Do you
|
|
ever act nowadays in your comedies?"
|
|
"No."
|
|
"Any reason?"
|
|
"Well, acting isn't my business any more. You can't direct the
|
|
activities of a big motion picture studio and wear grease paint at the same
|
|
time. Oh, once in a while I got out on stage and show someone how to work
|
|
out a bit of business, but never anything more than that. Most of my time is
|
|
spent on the stories and gags."
|
|
At this point Mr. Sennett's manager contributed the information that the
|
|
rest of his employer's time was spent supervising the direction, editing and
|
|
titling of the comedies that bear his name.
|
|
"But years ago, as I understand it, you wrote nearly all your own
|
|
slapstick. Is that right?"
|
|
"Well, pretty nearly, at first."
|
|
"But not any more?"
|
|
"Not so much. Oh, once in a while I get an idea or so--the same as
|
|
anyone else--and, when I do, I call a stenographer and dictate it roughly.
|
|
We have a lot of stages out there to keep going. But I don't know that I can
|
|
say that anybody writes 'em. We have a board of scenario writers now--twelve
|
|
or fifteen all the time--and they all work together more or less.
|
|
"Whenever anyone has a real idea in the rough, it goes before that
|
|
board, and they thrash it out among themselves. Of course, everyone sits in
|
|
one that--myself and everyone else who wants to. Everyone is absolutely free
|
|
to say what he thinks is wrong and without prejudice on anybody's part.
|
|
In fact, everybody is encouraged to do that. But once in a while, even when
|
|
one of us gets a plot we think is all right to start with, we can't make it
|
|
work. No one can, at times. We have had plots on which we all worked, for a
|
|
week or ten days, without being able to solve some problem which, if we
|
|
didn't solve it, ruined the whole thing. And then, finally, we had to give
|
|
it up because it just couldn't be solved.
|
|
"Some of these things are more difficult than you think, and sometimes
|
|
we even get superstitious about them and change the spot on which we are
|
|
trying to work so as to change our luck. In fact, it's come to this--that we
|
|
have spots, or rooms, or places, which we consider lucky or unlucky. I
|
|
remember one time, we had one of these tough problems and we had moved around
|
|
from one place to another on the lot for days, trying to work it out. And
|
|
finally I bundled the whole crowd in a car and took 'em away from the lot
|
|
entirely and out to a new place on a hill, or rather a mountain top, in
|
|
Griffith Park. We had our lunch and our cigars, but we no sooner got out and
|
|
settled than one fellow jumped up, smacked his hands together and said: 'It's
|
|
a letter.' What he meant was that the problem could be solved with a letter.
|
|
For weeks after that we went out on that hill in the hope of getting results
|
|
in other cases, but we finally gave it up because it was kind of far and the
|
|
results didn't always warrant trips."
|
|
And now I recalled that Mr. Sennett has always been very much interested
|
|
in personality--that fascinating something which makes celebrities out of
|
|
unknowns. The list of the subsequently-to-be-famous stars from Chaplin to
|
|
Langdon, who, unheralded and unknown, were first fostered and trained by him,
|
|
is long. And so I said:
|
|
"You have detected and trained a number of film geniuses. How do you
|
|
define that 'something' that sets a certain-to-be-star apart from those who
|
|
do not happen to possess it?"
|
|
"I wouldn't know how to define it exactly," he replied.
|
|
"Then there's no one characteristic that is common to all beginners who
|
|
finally reach a high place and great fame?"
|
|
"Well, maybe one, yes," he returned, after pausing and drumming on the
|
|
table, "though some people who don't become stars have that, too."
|
|
"And that is?"
|
|
"A tireless desire to work."
|
|
"Is that all?"
|
|
"No, not all. There's something else. An intense interest in their own
|
|
future or success. They all have that--if they get over."
|
|
"Anything else?"
|
|
"Well, I'll tell you. They have a phrase in pictures now which
|
|
everybody uses when they want to describe the thing you're talking about--the
|
|
something that makes a star, as opposed, say, to the absence of it in someone
|
|
who can never hope to be one. They say, 'He's got It,' or 'She's got It.'
|
|
And the way they emphasize the word "It" tells you what they mean. But if
|
|
you tried to make them say what they mean by It, they couldn't tell you. And
|
|
I couldn't either, because the style or expression of that It is so different
|
|
in different people. Take Douglas Fairbanks now. His It, as I see it, is a
|
|
wonderful athletic skill and that laughing, defiant smile he has, together
|
|
with the power to strike an effective and interesting pose. On the other
|
|
hand, Chaplin has a nervous, frightened look when he wants to use it and the
|
|
gift of making you feel that he is trying to get away with something that he
|
|
shouldn't and yet making you sympathize with him. Then Harry Langdon, who I
|
|
consider the greatest of them all."
|
|
"Greater than Chaplin?" I interpolated.
|
|
"Yes, greater than Chaplin," he replied. "Well, Langdon suggests a kind
|
|
of baby weakness that causes everybody to feel sorry for him and want to help
|
|
him out. He's terribly funny to me. On the other hand, Langdon knows less
|
|
about stories and motion picture technique than perhaps any other screen
|
|
star. If he isn't a big success on the screen, it will not be because he
|
|
isn't funny, but because he doesn't understand the many sides to picture
|
|
production. He wants to do a monologue all the time; he wants to be the
|
|
leading lady, cameraman, heavy and director all in one. So far in my
|
|
experience that attitude has never proved successful."
|
|
Our conversation here drifted toward the finding of the most celebrated
|
|
of these funny people. It is thought by some that Sennett could not have
|
|
helped Chaplin to fame and fortune. But to me, the reverse seems true.
|
|
He could, or should have been able to. He is the strong, wise, elemental
|
|
director and master, really. There is an impressive and, for some I am sure,
|
|
a terrifying force to him. I can easily see how he could manage fourteen
|
|
lots and a hundred comedy stages, if he chose. He has convictions and the
|
|
poise that is born of them. And convictions spring from innate perception.
|
|
But to return. As Mr. Sennett told it, he had in his Keystone Comedy
|
|
Company, in New York, at that time a comedian, Ford Sterling. This Sterling
|
|
was going to quit him because, as he expressed it, "he could get more money
|
|
that I could pay him."
|
|
"I tried to coax him to stay but there was nothing doing. Then I
|
|
remembered a little Englishman I'd seen one night a Morris' three-a-day on
|
|
the American roof. And I sent around and hired him."
|
|
"Charlie Chaplin, you mean?"
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
"And what about Chaplin? Was he anything like what he is today?"
|
|
"Not so different. Of course we've all had a lot of experience since
|
|
then. Chaplin didn't have that make-up he uses now. That costume was
|
|
assembled on my lot out there in Los Angeles." (By then the Keystone Company
|
|
had removed to Los Angeles.) "He tried out several different make-ups before
|
|
he found that one. The first he used was that of a drunk--a man in evening
|
|
clothes, with a red nose--the old stuff, you see. It didn't go very well, in
|
|
fact wasn't different enough to give it originality. Then he tried other
|
|
things--I forget just what. In those days we used to get on new make-ups and
|
|
run around the stage to see if we could get a laugh from the rest of the
|
|
gang. One day Chaplin took a pair of Chester Conklin's baggy trousers, the
|
|
small derby that Roscoe Arbuckle always wore, and the big shoes which were a
|
|
part of Ford Sterling's old makeup. The cane was one of Chaplin's own
|
|
props--he always used a cane. Well, as soon as I saw the get-up, I knew that
|
|
was IT.
|
|
"I remember one thing about Chaplin. He was the most interested person
|
|
where he himself, his future, the kind of thing he was trying to do, was
|
|
concerned, that I ever knew. He wanted to work--and nearly all the time.
|
|
We went to work at eight o'clock and he was there at seven. We quit at five,
|
|
say, or later, but he'd still be around at six, and wanting to talk about his
|
|
work to me all the time. The average actor, as maybe you know, is just an
|
|
actor. When it's quitting time, he's through. His job is done. He's
|
|
thinking of something else--maybe even when he's working--and he wants to get
|
|
away so he can attend to it. But these personality people are different.
|
|
"Why, this fellow Chaplin used to fairly sweat if he thought he hadn't
|
|
done a thing as well as he should have. And he was always complaining of
|
|
this, that, and the other--the kind of director he had, the kind of actors
|
|
that worked with him, that his part wasn't big enough, that he ought to have
|
|
more stage room to do the thing the way he wanted to do it. And when the
|
|
time came that he could see the film of the day's work, he was always there,
|
|
whereas, most of the others in the picture would never come around. And if
|
|
anything in the run didn't please him, he'd click his tongue or snap his
|
|
fingers and twist and squirm. 'Now, why did I do that that way? What was
|
|
the matter with me, anyhow? So and so (the director) should have caught
|
|
that. Heavens, it's terrible. There's always something wrong.'
|
|
"Chaplin's one fellow who has to work alone, and alone he works.
|
|
"And," he went on, "Harry Langdon is another of the same sort. He came
|
|
to me four or five years ago and I picked him for a sure thing. About the
|
|
same case as Chaplin--same temperament--only I think him the greater artist."
|
|
"Why?"
|
|
"A wider range of emotions and so a wider appeal."
|
|
I took the matter under silent critical examination.
|
|
"And in Langdon the same restless energy and criticism of everything.
|
|
Why, nothing was ever right, because, like Chaplin, he had his own ideas,
|
|
exactly, of how everything should be done. And he didn't want to be
|
|
interfered with, although, of course, he was there under contract and had to
|
|
take direction from others."
|
|
"Are women stars more or less difficult than men to handle--artistically
|
|
or commercially?" I here interpolated.
|
|
"Less so, for me, I think. I can't speak for anyone else. They may be
|
|
more temperamental at times in regard to this point and that--things of no
|
|
great consequence artistically or practically--but they're not so eager to
|
|
run things all alone. They 'troop' better. Most often you can hold them by
|
|
showing them that you're trying to do the best you can under the
|
|
circumstances.
|
|
"Gloria Swanson had one of the most delightful personalities of any girl
|
|
on our lot when she played in our comedies. Besides being sincere and
|
|
conscientious and a hard worker, she had charm that attracted the admiration
|
|
of everyone who came in contact with her."
|
|
It must have been twenty minutes of, or after, for here we both paused
|
|
and rested. And then, after a time, we came back to the matter of humor in
|
|
connection with women--whether they had it to the same degree as men--whether
|
|
there were as many humorous or witty or waggish women as men. Decidedly not,
|
|
thought Mr. Sennett, and some difference in the sexes must account for it.
|
|
Yet now and then, as he explained, there appeared the real woman wag or wit,
|
|
and how excellent she was. Instantly he cited Mabel Normand, and after her
|
|
Louise Fazenda, and then Polly Moran. Distinctly they had humor. And in the
|
|
case of Mabel Normand, it was so elusive and yet so real that while you knew
|
|
it was there, yet you could scarcely say where it was. Why, that girl could
|
|
walk down the aisle of a church, in the midst of services, and without
|
|
offense to anybody, and without any outward sign of any kind that you could
|
|
definitely point to, could get a laugh, or at least a smile, and from
|
|
everybody.
|
|
"I don't know what it is," he interjected here. "For the life of me I
|
|
couldn't tell you how or why. But she can do it. And Louise Fazenda can
|
|
almost do it. As for all the other women I know, mostly you have to create
|
|
humor for them. It isn't inside. They can get it over if you drill them,
|
|
but unless you do they haven't so much to offer--and that goes for some who
|
|
are pretty fair in pictures." (He declined to say who.)
|
|
"I was just thinking of a nice woman we had out there at the studio."
|
|
He laughed at this point. "Good actress, too. Played crazy parts that we
|
|
created for her, but did it under protest sometimes because she didn't always
|
|
like it." (And all this in connection with what I was just saying.) "Well,
|
|
we got up a part in which she had to wear a big red wig and a cauliflower
|
|
ear." And here he went off into another low chuckle that would bring anyone
|
|
to laughing.
|
|
"What a shame!" I said, thinking of the hard-working, self-respecting
|
|
actress.
|
|
"I know," he replied. "It was sort of rough." And he laughed again.
|
|
"But we couldn't let her off." And into that line I read the very base and
|
|
cornerstone of that ribald Rabelaisian gusto and gaiety that has kept a
|
|
substantial part of America laughing with him all of these years. Slapstick
|
|
vigor--the burlesque counterpart of sentiment--the grotesquely comic mask set
|
|
over against the tragic.
|
|
Sennett is obviously the artist who takes delight in developing latent
|
|
possibilities in screen aspirants. For he now began to tell me of others in
|
|
this grotesque field in whose future he had the greatest faith. One of these
|
|
is a youth by the name of Eddie Quillan, now working for him, of whom he
|
|
said: "Now, there's a boy who would make good." (That unquenchable
|
|
enthusiasm for developing talent.)
|
|
"What makes you think so?" I said.
|
|
"Well, he has talent. He is enthusiastic, and he has a line of his own.
|
|
Just like every other fellow that gets over, he likes to work and he
|
|
criticizes himself. The more I see of his work, the more sure I am he is
|
|
going to be a success."
|
|
He then spoke of a girl, Madeline Hurlock, who gave no particular
|
|
promise of stardom at first.
|
|
"I tried her out," he said, "and most of us were puzzled at first
|
|
because we put her in one thing and another and she didn't seem to do
|
|
anything. Just stood around, as far as we could see. And we thought she was
|
|
a total loss, or I did. But after a while we began to hear from exhibitors.
|
|
They showed interest in her--liked her personality--asked who she was. Then
|
|
I began to understand that there was something about the way she did stand
|
|
around, perhaps, that was interesting to the public--her poise. So I began
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to surround her with the kind of material that would bring her out. And she
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herself, the more she becomes used to this work, is developing
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characteristics and stunts which are certain to make her into a sure-fire
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personality if she keeps on."
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"Another star?" I said.
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"I think so," he replied. "And then," he went on, that same light of
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the creator as well as discoverer in his eye, "we have a kid--a baby girl--
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whose mother brought her in to me--Mary Ann Jackson. Hundreds and hundreds
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of babies are brought in to be tried out, but it's just like it is in
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everything else--one stands out and another doesn't and we were lucky enough
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in her case to find a baby we think is going to develop into a national
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celebrity. I am not saying that because these people are connected with me,
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because new personalities are coming up everywhere. I always notice that as
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one personality passes into oblivion, there's always another comes along
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somewhere."
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"And you think you have three of 'em?" I asked.
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"Well, yes, that's what I think," he replied.
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|
But there still remained the Mack Sennett of the bathing beauty fame to
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interpret and I wanted to talk of that, to say nothing of the beauty herself,
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as a national and even international feature--the only successful rival, as I
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|
see it, to Mr. Ziegfeld and his Follies Girls that has ever appeared in
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America or elsewhere. And so I said: "And now what about your bathing
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beauties, Mr. Sennett? What have you to say for that as an idea--artistic or
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|
otherwise?"
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|
"Well, what's wrong with it?" he countered. And one could see the
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|
ancient "Irish" in him simmer.
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|
"Nothing wrong with it," I replied. "Didn't I pay a special admission
|
|
price the time you sent your group around the country? But was it your idea
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|
or someone else's--that of organizing and sending such a group around? And
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|
was she a purely commercial proposition, likely to bring in hard cash, as
|
|
someone has charged, or an artistic idea to you?"
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|
He paused to think and finally replied: "Nothing so definite as either.
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|
Everyone likes to look at a beautiful girl. It sort of helps out the days,
|
|
doesn't it? Besides, in the kind of burlesque comedy I was doing, there had
|
|
to be a relief in the form of beauty of some sort. There's no chance for
|
|
sentiment in the kind of thing we do--or very little. You can't have a girl
|
|
stick her toe in a brook and make moon eyes at a boy across the way in
|
|
burlesque. Mostly--especially in the old days--it was sorta rough, and we
|
|
had to have something or someone as a contrast, so I thought of sticking in a
|
|
pretty girl or two--the prettier the better."
|
|
"And that's all there was to it?"
|
|
"Well, nearly all. Of course, then the business grew and we had a lot
|
|
of them around, somehow the idea of bathing pictures came up. I suppose we
|
|
did a lot of those comedies by the sea, with bathing girls in them, because
|
|
they made a pretty picture. And then I suppose someone on a newspaper first
|
|
called them 'Bathing Beauties.' But pretty soon, just the same, there she
|
|
was, labeled. And pretty soon after that, it became 'Mack Sennett's Bathing
|
|
Beauties' because I was almost the only comedy producer in the field who used
|
|
them. And I had the most of them. Well, when an idea like that catches on,
|
|
and you see that the general public is interested, you'd be dumb if you
|
|
didn't see what to do about it. I don't know now whether I or someone else
|
|
suggested getting the girls together and sending them around one season--I
|
|
think it was one of the first distributing agents here in New York that first
|
|
thought of it--but anyhow, it finally looked to be the thing to do and we did
|
|
it."
|
|
"You did it, you mean."
|
|
"Well, I agreed to let it be done."
|
|
"And created a more striking thing than the Follies."
|
|
"You think so?"
|
|
"I do."
|
|
"Thanks. Of course, there was criticism. There always is where a lot
|
|
of pretty girls are used in a public way like that. Besides, human beings
|
|
will be human beings and in the old days when the business was new there
|
|
wasn't as much restraint as there is now. Couldn't be. Things were too
|
|
disorganized--too many things to do and think of. And, of course, there was
|
|
talk whenever a girl cut up a little, or ran away and got married. And there
|
|
always will be undesirables show up in every line of work, even among girls.
|
|
But today we don't stand for them. We want nice girls--the kind of girls who
|
|
live at home. And what's more," and here he grew quite emphatic, "we give
|
|
them every chance of leading just the sort of life that the public respects.
|
|
And I guess the public knows it, for there's very little criticism of any
|
|
kind any more. Mostly we're looking for the girl of ambition and with
|
|
talent, especially where she's pretty--the one who wants to get somewhere--
|
|
and when you get that kind you find girls who can look out for themselves,
|
|
and want to--they don't need watching."
|
|
His manner indicated that he had said all he could think of in regard to
|
|
the bathing beauty and I could think of no further phase of her to discuss.
|
|
However, there was another thing that interested me--a comment he had made on
|
|
the everyday actor as such--the one without much talent or ambition, yet whom
|
|
he uses in numbers, and so I said: "What about the average actor--you who
|
|
love the potential star so much?"
|
|
"Oh, him," he said reminiscently. "Well, he's all right. I shouldn't
|
|
really say anything about him, for, after all, he is what he is, and he can't
|
|
help it, and what's more, he's useful--very. The only trouble with him as
|
|
far as his own future is concerned is that he's lazy--or if not that, then he
|
|
feels no call or inspiration to do anything more than just the thing he's
|
|
told to do or is shown how to do.
|
|
"I've employed a lot of them in my time, and there's no essential
|
|
difference in the temperament of any of them.
|
|
"Sometimes I have to laugh when I think of these people, and sometimes
|
|
I'm sorry for them, for here they are, with the same opportunities as
|
|
Chaplin, Langdon, Harold Lloyd, Fairbanks, Pickford, Swanson--anybody--and
|
|
they do just what they have to do and no more. They are easily satisfied.
|
|
They do not know the restlessness and discontent that is forever eating at
|
|
the heart of a real artist. Nor do they ever experience the bubbling
|
|
enthusiasm and burning ambition and unshakable optimism of the fellow who
|
|
gets there. The difference between the ordinary actor and the artist might
|
|
be compared to the difference between an adult and a child; the adult,
|
|
prosaic, practical, working from necessity, and rather disillusioned.
|
|
"The artist--the child--a gypsy, curious, impractical, enthusiastic, a
|
|
tireless worker at the work he loves, idealistic, never knowing quiet and
|
|
contentment.
|
|
"Well, I guess the average actor is just a tradesman, working at his
|
|
trade; he might as well punch a clock with the carpenters and mechanics.
|
|
"You say to one of them, 'Well, you have to be a fireman today. Here's
|
|
the part.' And they'll take it and get instructions as to about what's
|
|
wanted. Then they'll dress it and put in the usual funny stuff about a
|
|
fireman--the stuff they know or thought of years before. But anything new?
|
|
No! Or very little--so little that it doesn't make any real difference in
|
|
their standing from year to year. Yet you know always that whatever you give
|
|
them to do they'll do well enough, but that's all, Just so they get by. And
|
|
after that, well, they're thinking just like any clerk--or nearly so--of what
|
|
time it is. Maybe they have a wife and kids, as most of them have--and they
|
|
live in some neighborhood where they know everybody and go to parties or
|
|
dinner, or to church, or to lodge-meeting at night. Or maybe it's some real
|
|
estate deal they're interested in and thinking of at the very time they're
|
|
working, playing those crazy roles. Yet any one of them with a spark of fire
|
|
could step out of the ranks and begin to attract general attention. But they
|
|
haven't got it.
|
|
"And it isn't their fault. They can't get it. They weren't born with
|
|
that urge that makes the artist work his head off all day, then think and
|
|
talk and play his work the rest of the time."
|
|
And here he went off into one of those still, contemplative moods,
|
|
laying his chin in one of his interesting, forceful hands, and thinking, as
|
|
well he might.
|
|
And lastly there was the matter of Mr. Sennett himself--his present
|
|
"right now" mood in regard to himself and his work. For back of this gray,
|
|
somewhat carelessly dressed man, as I could feel, and even see by his manner,
|
|
was his fortune of at least fifteen millions. And world-wide fame for his
|
|
name. And his big studio in Los Angeles, with its many big stages; to say
|
|
nothing of companies. And on a mountain, which he is having cut off at the
|
|
very top in order to give himself sky space and field breadth, a great house.
|
|
And his old Irish-Canadian mother, as I understand, is to have a special
|
|
entrance in this grand house, so that she won't be compelled to come in
|
|
contact with the crowd he must ever meet.
|
|
A charming, sensitive touch, that. And so I said:
|
|
"And now, what of the future, Mr. Sennett? Any special developments?"
|
|
"No, none in particular that I see at the moment. Of course business
|
|
conditions are changing. We produce more and more films. The public taste
|
|
is changing.
|
|
"They want better dressed comedians--fewer axes and the like of that,
|
|
maybe. But apart from that--"
|
|
"Are you as much interested in comedy as ever?"
|
|
"Just as much--yes--maybe more so."
|
|
"Never get weary of it all?"
|
|
"Oh, I won't say that. For a few minutes, maybe, at times. Not so much
|
|
longer."
|
|
"Haven't ever a desire to get away for a long time and rest?"
|
|
"Well, sometimes I think I have. But I soon get over it. If anything,
|
|
the game gets more interesting to me. I can scarcely stay away from the
|
|
studio. Take this particular trip. I did think I'd like to come here and
|
|
stay three months or so for a rest or change somehow.
|
|
"But here I am--only here three or four weeks and anxious to get back.
|
|
Habit, maybe.
|
|
"You might call it a bad one--my ruling weakness or sin. Well, that's
|
|
the way it is." He smiled amusedly and I could see so clearly in his face
|
|
his love for his work. He will die making comedies.
|
|
But here I added by way of finis:
|
|
"You don't intend to try any more melodrama, I suppose?"
|
|
"Oh, I don't know. I may--" he laughed.
|
|
"Or dramas? Or tragedies?"
|
|
"No tragedies. That's your game. You can have it."
|
|
"And as for bathing beauties?"
|
|
"Well, when the public gets tired of looking at attractive women--"
|
|
He stirred, and I rose.
|
|
Together we strolled out into the lobby of the Ambassador.
|
|
Already a telegram or two for him--a boy with a letter.
|
|
"If you want to, and will, come out and stay around the lot for three
|
|
weeks or a month, and see for yourself. I'll throw everything open to you.
|
|
You can look round the stages and make friends with the actors and directors,
|
|
sit in on the comedy-building conferences, interview anybody you like--even
|
|
me--go out to the homes of those who work for me and see how they live.
|
|
"It's an interesting world, and it might make a book--"
|
|
"Or a Mack Sennett comedy," I replied.
|
|
"Or a Mack Sennett comedy," he repeated.
|
|
The interview was over.
|
|
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
*****************************************************************************
|
|
Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at any of the following:
|
|
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/
|
|
http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/Taylorology/
|
|
http://www.silent-movies.com/Taylorology/
|
|
Full text searches of back issues can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/
|
|
or at http://www.silent-movies.com/search.html. For more information about
|
|
Taylor, see
|
|
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
|
|
*****************************************************************************
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